


Both

by leobrat



Category: Eastern Promises (2007)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 18:45:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leobrat/pseuds/leobrat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were once two boys.  They were born in the same country, in the same year.  They both had blue eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Both

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Miss BG](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Miss+BG).



There were once two boys...

They were born in the same country, in the same year. They both had blue eyes.

One was born in a very warm home, full of sisters, who waited under heavy quilts and giggled and sang songs like little girls do, and hugged and kissed each other when they were told, in the very late hours of the evening, that they had a brother.

"He is very small," the little boy's father said, wrapping him more securely in his first blanket. "But he will grow." And he called his first and only son Kirill, which meant 'lord'. For his father was a very ambitious man, and meant to create an empire which he would pass to this son.

The other was born in a very small home, with cracks under the doors that let in howling winds. The house was filled with nothing. Everything was bare and less than it should be. Except the blue-eyed baby boy, born in the very early hours of the morning.

"He is so large," the little boy's father said, blocking his ears from his new son's first strong, lusty wail. "It will take much to feed him." And the boy's mother named him Mikhail, for the archangel.

***

When Kirill was very young, his mother died, and his father took their family away from the country which bore them. He told all of Kirill's sisters that they were going to a city where a queen lived, and they would all be princesses.

"And you will be a man, my son," his father said to Kirill, the hand on his shoulder almost too heavy. "And I will teach you all you need to know."

"Yes, Papa," Kirill answered.

Days after Mikhail was born, his mother died, and his father brought him to a woman in the village who had also recently had a child, a baby girl, so that she could nurse the baby.

Mikhail's father worked for the postal service and he had a little money, and so he brought this woman extra potatoes in payment, and when he could, a little meat.

"He is so slow in growing," his father said, one day as he was leaving the woman's house. "I need him to grow up, tall and straight and strong so that he can help me in my work, not fat like he is now."

"He will grow in his own time," the woman answered. Her eyes were kind and soft but her voice was tired and her shoulders slumped. "In his own time, he will be a man." She shushed her own daughter, fussing against her covered breast, and went back into her house.

***

Both boys were raised to record their lives in pictures on their skin, as all men from their part of the world did. When Mikhail was fifteen, he was stealing from his father's business, taking parts of cars and motorbikes that he was meant to repair and selling them. When he was found out by authorities, he was beaten with sticks and pipes and his father wouldn't look him in the eye. He went to prison and marked himself as a thief.

When Kirill was seventeen, in great ceremony and pomp and circumstance, his father presented him with his first picture, his first story to tell. A star. Across shoulders and knees. He was, after all, a prince.

"Lord by birth," his father muttered, standing over him, his voice betraying the shame he felt as Kirill wiped away the tears from his clear blue eyes. "Lord by birth, do not fucking cry over the sting of honor."

***

In their own time, both boys became men.

Mikhail spent years in darkness. He had no one to talk to but God. God never spoke to him, though. And when he emerged from the darkness, Mikhail spoke to no one. And he stopped calling himself Mikhail. He became Nikolai, son of no one, and it was Nikolai's story drawn on his skin.

Kirill spent years in fog. The city was full of fog, never quite cold like the country which bore him, never quite warm like he always wished for. And as Kirill grew, and his secret began to eat him from the inside out, he still told no one.

By this time, Kirill's father was a very famous boss. By this time, he had lost all use for his first and only son. Kirill longed to be of use. He loved and hated his father.

Nikolai had come to know of Kirill's father too, as he had moved from the country which bore him (and killed him) to the far away city of fog. Like Kirill, he longed to be of use to the Boss. Unlike Kirill, he only hated him.

***

While Kirill continued to be of no use, Nikolai's usefulness became quite apparent. He was quiet in front of the Boss, which led him to believe that the big, blonde ox was stupid, and he paid him no mind. But away from the Boss, away from Papa, Nikolai was...lightning.

And as thunder always followed lightning, Kirill would follow Nikolai everywhere. But as a lord by birth, he could never let on that it was he who was the follower.

"Where are you going, Nikolai?"

"To the other side of town, to pick something up."

"I need to go too. You fucking drive me."

"Okay, Kirill."

And as lightning comes before thunder, Nikolai began to come before Kirill to the Boss.

Kirill was useless. But Nikolai needed a partner who would always follow him.

***

The Boss studied them both, unconcealed anger directed at Kirill, his first and only son, lord by birth, and with restrained curiosity directed at the big, blond, stupid ox. He felt it was the first time he had looked at him. A murder had been done, a murder of a man of some consequence, and there would be trouble. "If you are so well informed, you will know Soyka has brothers."

The man called Nikolai smiled, and the smile did not reach his blue eyes. "That's okay. Kirill has got me."

**Author's Note:**

> Happy holidays! The prompt I was working with was 'Kirill and Nikolai feeling the same way'. And well, I just find them to be such vastly different characters that I don't think they'd have the same reaction or opinion about almost anything, and the main thing they have in common is somehow, someway, they ended up walking the same path in life. So what I tried to show was how the differences in their lives still led them to end up in the same place, at the same time. Hope I succeeded!


End file.
